


the gate of fear

by spoopyy



Category: Buzzfeed Unsolved (Web Series)
Genre: F/M, I'm very sorry, ambiguous ending kinda
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-15
Updated: 2017-09-15
Packaged: 2018-12-30 06:15:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,568
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12102546
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/spoopyy/pseuds/spoopyy
Summary: Love is the master key that opens the gates of happiness, of hatred, of jealousy, and most easily of all, the gate of fear. - Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.Or, Pam has always been jealous of her sister.





	the gate of fear

**Author's Note:**

> this is the dumbest thing i've ever written lmfao enjoy!

Pam has always been jealous of Rebecca. 

It starts when they’re young. Rebecca, the oldest child, the poster girl for being a perfect daughter, is the treasure of the family. She’s fawned over by hotdogs and hamburgers alike; indeed, other such sandwiches envy her beauty and the way she wears her condiments so well. 

Pam, meanwhile, is the complete opposite. No one gives her a second glance; at barbeques, she is ignored by the same boys who try to get Rebecca’s attention. She’s the talk of the town, but for quite a different reason than her sister. 

It makes her bitter. 

When they start school, Rebecca gets better grades than Pam, even though Pam works twice as hard. Their parents praise Rebecca to the high heavens. Meanwhile, Pam gets grilled over her less than stellar marks.

  
It’s not fair. 

Later, when their mom starts putting them in after school activities - namely, the 25th Annual Miss Teeny Weenie Pageant - Rebecca walks away with the coveted Ketchup Crown, while Pam goes home empty handed. For all her hard work, Rebecca gets a brand new bun, and this only enhances her beauty. Pam watches with unbridled fury but keeps her mouth shut.

As they get older, Rebecca continuously outshines Pam; when they enter grade school, Rebecca has the prettier cursive. Rebecca has the cuter hair, the nicer smile, the most luxurious seasonings. Rebecca even gets a job before Pam, and even though it’s not glamorous, it’s still better than Pam. Everything Rebecca does is better than Pam, and she’s very, very angry. 

This continues through their Senior Year of highschool; Rebecca gets asked to prom by several upstanding hotdogs - fine young sausages, really - and Pam watches as Rebecca sits in their shared room, examining the pictures of her suitors, whilst trying to make the best decision possible. 

Pam doesn’t get asked to prom. She’s probably not going to go, even though Rebecca had been adamant they match. Why, their mother had even gotten them complementary dresses, with new dressings and toppings to boot! Surely, the rich, spicy onion shouldn’t go to waste! And the relish, Pam would kill to wear relish on the most important day of her teenage life! 

But she can’t go without a date, not when Rebecca is going with someone. So she skips prom and goes out instead; New York has the best nightclubs, after all, and seeing as she’s eighteen, she feels rebellious and powerful doing this by herself. 

She meets Dan after getting kicked out of one of the more unsavory discotheques in town. They berated her for “not being a sandwich” and as she’s thrown out of the bar, she sees a _SANDWICHES ONLY_ sign and resigns herself to a life of not being good enough. 

“You got kicked out too?” Dan says, nursing an injury. 

Pam nods mutely. Not only is her prom ruined, but she’s also not a sandwich. Rebecca would pass as a sandwich!

“Don’t worry about it. This club is notoriously racist against hotdogs,” Dan says, standing up. He offers Pam a hand. “Mind if I walk you home?” he asks when Pam takes it. She recognizes him from the football team - though he’s not a varsity athlete, he still has the same sense of adventure that Pam finds attractive. 

“Go ahead, I don’t mind,” Pam says. 

“Say, what’s a scrumptious looking hotdog like yourself doing at a club like that? Don’t you know it’s dangerous to be out by yourself?” Dan says, hands shoved deeply into the pockets of his letterman. The school colors really bring out the shine of Dan’s bun.  

Pam shrugs. “I skipped prom because no one asked me.” The truth sounds harsh to her own ears. 

“Well, that’s too bad,” Dan says. No one’s ever felt bad for her before, and she relishes in the attention.

“Yeah, I guess it is,” she muses. They get back to her house safely, and Dan waves at her once her mother collects her at the door. 

“Goodbye, then. See ya around,” his southern accent is very pronounced, and Pam thinks it’s the best accent she’s ever heard.

They start dating a week later. 

Pam falls in love with Dan; it’s expected for hotdogs to settle down relatively quickly after school, and besides, Dan is the perfect hotdog in every way. He treats her with respect, he’s transparent about what makes him up, and he even has a new sesame seed bun, a status symbol. 

Of course, as with most things in Pam’s life, nothing goes according to plan. They break up after only a few days because Dan “has a scholarship to worry about”. As if! Dan didn’t even get into Oscar Mayer University! But Pam accepts the break up and grits her teeth over it. 

A couple months later, she finds out that Rebecca and Dan are together. Rebecca couldn’t even tell it to her face! No, Pam had to find out via Insdogram and really, it’s the condiment that breaks the hotdog’s bun. 

“You could stand to be more like your sister,” their mother says when Rebecca announces her engagement after many years of dating. It happened too suddenly, if you asked Pam (no one did). Surely, it would’ve been scandalous if  _ Pam  _ had come home covered in mustard, but because Rebecca is the tastiest hotdog in the packet, their parents hadn’t said anything.

“But Mom! I was dating Dan first!” Pam says. She’s still jealous and hurt and angry. 

“Pam, look. Dan chose her. That’s just how love works sometimes,” her mother says with a long sigh. “Now, go try on your Frank of Honor dress, I need to know if it fits.” 

She stomps her way up the stairs and tries on the dress.  _ We met at a club too!  _ Pam thinks, stepping into the shiny plastic of her gown. It fits perfectly. Almost too perfectly, really. As she examines her appearance in the mirror, she imagines what it would be like if their positions were reversed, if she were the one who got everything she wanted instead of Rebecca. 

A dam breaks deep within her. She can’t let go of all the years of Rebecca being better than her, of her parents not showing her the love she deserved, of Dan being flighty, of  _ not being good enough.  _ Really, at this point, she should just run away to a  _ restaurant  _ and offer to be on the menu. 

So, she plots. And she waits. She can’t go crazy and make Rebecca’s wedding a disaster. No, she has to be more calculated and cool about the whole thing, because now is not the time to go bun first. This time, she wants more than to be better than her sister. This time, she wants  _ revenge.  _

After the wedding, she tells the owner of the gun store exactly what she wants. He complies, and Pam hides her purchase from her family. She has a wedding to go to, after all. 

~

The crab joust ultimately defines who wins and who loses. That’s how they do things here, on this island, this oasis away from home. It’s time to finally settle things once and for all;  _ who’s the better sibling, who deserves Dan, who lives and who dies?  _

Pam charges full speed ahead, her jousting rod held tight. She can’t wait to get back at Dan for all the pain he’s caused her. Killing Dan won’t just hurt Dan, either; her true target is her sister, but even the most undignified of hotdogs know that family ties trump everything else.

Behind her, she can hear her sister gasp in horror, and Pam thinks of all the events that led up to this moment; the constant competition in their youth, the fact that Rebecca  _ stole  _ Dan from her, their pig in a blanket baby, and all the jealousies rise up like sauerkraut in her throat, bitter and ready to overflow. 

As the crabs get closer and closer to one another, Pam tightens her grip on her jousting rod, prepared to strike. She wants to get Dan right where it’s going to hurt the most; if she hits his bun, she’ll never forgive herself for missing. 

The collision happens as fast as anything; one minute, she can see Dan’s crab foaming at the mouth and the next, she feels something sharp pierce her meaty flesh. When she gets her spices about her and tries to sit up, she finds that she can’t. She’s losing so much blood. Her vision swims in and out of focus and the entire time she’s on the ground, she’s hoping beyond hope that she managed to kill Dan in the process. 

In the distance, she can see Dan and Brandon drive away - perhaps to safety, perhaps to report her to the sandwich police - and she knows she’s unsuccessful. What’s more heartbreaking is the fact that Rebecca comes over to help her. After all these years, Rebecca is still the bigger person, the  _ better  _ sister, and Pam feels like the wurst thing to ever happen to hotdog-kind. 

As Rebecca tries and fails to staunch the bleeding, Pam can faintly hear herself speak. Whether she’s apologizing for all the hurt she’s caused or cursing her sister to the high heavens, she can’t make out the words coming out of her mouth. She’s getting closer and closer to the light, and just like that, everything flashes to white. 

**Author's Note:**

> hotdogs are sandwiches okay bye
> 
>  
> 
> [come fight me on tumblr](https://brentbennett.tumblr.com/)


End file.
